My stats went off the charts this morning, and now I know why. Peter Shankman's wonderful Help A Reporter Out (HARO) referral network has landed me another 15 minutes of blog fame and a big boost to my blogsite. Last month one of his reporters put out a query for interviews with New Yorkers who have moved to Atlanta. I responded and had a lovely chat with Bloomberg News ATL bureau chief Steve Matthews. Story below. I don't agree with the ex-pats about Atlanta pizza, by the way. Osteria 832 is as good as coal fired Salvatore's pizza in Port Washington, and Fellinis is on par with the average New York pizzeria. You wanna talk about bagels...now there's an area where Atlanta needs improvement.
`Damn Yankees' From New York Raid Atlanta Housing, Spurn Pizza
By Steve Matthews
July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Atlanta sounded pretty good to Scott Merritt while he was squeezed into his parents' home on Long Island with his wife and two children.
He took a new job in the Georgia capital and moved his family to a $275,000 house in the suburbs with four bedrooms, a two-car garage and a yard with a swimming pool. It came at a cost to his New York sensibilities.
``I haven't found a single slice of pizza I have been remotely satisfied with,'' Merritt said. ``I am not going to the corner pharmacy and being welcomed by name any longer. It was a culture shock.''
The Merritts are among throngs of New Yorkers relocating to Georgia for affordable housing, a lower cost of living, a thriving job market and warmer winters. Displaced Northerners must adjust to Southern accents, a slower lifestyle, restaurants that close early, a ban on Sunday liquor sales and a reverence for ``Gone with the Wind.''
They're hunkering down by sticking together. New Yorkers in
Atlanta have their own group on www.myspace.com, and crowd
athletic venues when the Mets, Islanders or Jets visit. One exile
has a blog called ``Voted Off The Island.''
``We have this pocket of all relocated New Yorkers who hang
out together,'' said Merritt, 34. ``All damn Yankees.''
About 40,000 New Yorkers resettled in Atlanta between 2000 and 2005, double the number from any other state, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission. An additional 14,000 came from New Jersey. Atlanta gained 1 million people in the past seven years, the most of any U.S. metropolitan area. It added 177,549 jobs from 2003 to 2006.
Bargain Trail
``There is a huge migration from high-cost areas to lower-
cost areas, and Atlanta is a big beneficiary,'' said Mark Vitner,
senior economist with Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North
Carolina.
Housing is the biggest catalyst, said Barry Wolfert, 42, a real-estate agent and former New Yorker in Marietta, Georgia, who helps others relocate. The Atlanta area's median sales price for an existing single-family home was $172,000 last year, compared with $469,700 for the New York-Northern New Jersey region, according to the National Association of Realtors.
``For the money, you get double or triple the home,'' Wolfert said.
A career move spurred George Fleck, 32, to give up a $1,800 rent-controlled, studio apartment in Chelsea last year. For $1,300, he got a one-bedroom apartment with a balcony overlooking downtown Atlanta's Piedmont Park.
Fleck said he walks to his job at a midtown hotel and gets stares when he tells local residents that he doesn't have a car. Atlanta's Marta subway system has just two lines and fewer than 50 stops.
Cooler City
Differences like that make some transplants disdainful of
their new address 900 miles (1,400 kilometers) south.
``Atlanta is a second-tier city,'' said Jessica Harlan, 36, who relocated two years ago. ``New York is cooler and more exciting in every respect.''
New Yorkers may even take exception to the way Georgians speak. Their drawl, and expressions like ``y'all'' and ``bless her heart,'' grate on some newcomers.
``If my kids have a Southern accent, I will kill myself,'' said Brooklyn native Jodi Flensing, an Atlanta resident since 1998. Flensing said she tends to socialize with ex-New Yorkers, and finds inviting Southerners to lunch can be troublesome.
``Being Southern means you wait for someone to finish a
sentence,'' she said. ``We talk really fast. They can't get a
word in edgewise.''
Resistance to Change
City and business leaders have welcomed the new arrivals as
good for the economy. Skeptics say Atlanta, home of the 1996
Summer Olympics, risks becoming too cosmopolitan.
``We are not going to get that sophisticated, damn it,'' said native Mary Dobbs, 62. ``We are not that involved in sports. We have other things to do.''
Atlanta's bear no personal hostility toward New Yorkers, said Connie Sutherland, another native, who is director of the Gone With the Wind Museum.
``Since 9/11, everybody in the country has bonded with New York,'' she said.
Some New York transfers embrace the Southern lifestyle.
Steve Segall, 23, who moved to Atlanta after graduating from Cornell University, said friends up north are envious that when they have a foot of snow on the ground, Atlanta's climate allows him to play golf after work.
Sticking Together
Even so, the New Yorkers-in-Atlanta group on Myspace.com
draws suggestions of places for partying together and alerts on
low airfares home.
``I miss the lawn on Central Park,'' said Simone Joye, 42,
who organized the site after moving to suburban Stone Mountain
three years ago. ``I miss pizza -- real pizza -- and bagels and
lox. I miss bridges and the water, which creates a sense of
serenity. Atlanta has no beaches.''
The pull of Atlanta's affordability versus New York's excitement sometimes results in boomerangs. Amy Josephson, 46, moved to Atlanta a first time in 1992, returned to New York in 2005, then came back to Atlanta in September.
``I am a New Yorker through and through,'' she said, yet she missed her friends in Atlanta and its lower cost of living. ``I may feel different tomorrow.''
To contact the reporters on this story: Steve Matthews in Atlanta at [email protected];
Why would a New Yorker be so annoying as to come to a place and expect it to be just like their home? Would you move to Paris and say the same things? London?
As a former New Yorker and Atlantan...I'm embarrassed of this story...and the explicit pride in how rude we should be to people who have lived in this culture their entire lives.
The bit about "2nd tier city" and "if my kids have a southern accent..." were way over the line and shocking for even a New Yorker to say in print.
There are plenty of great places in Atlanta, and I'm proud to call it home. But I've taken in what it can offer and embraced it. Maybe some of you should too. If you want NY pizza...maybe you should make it yourself.
Some of the greatest minds and ideas have come from this city and this region and it doesn't deserve lambasting by outsiders.
I hate to say what i've heard my southern friends say...but...Delta's ready when you are! You obviously don't fit in here.
Posted by: Mary Datello | July 10, 2008 at 11:16 AM
Why would a New Yorker be so annoying as to come to a place and expect it to be just like their home? Would you move to Paris and say the same things? London?
As a former New Yorker and Atlantan...I'm embarrassed of this story...and the explicit pride in how rude we should be to people who have lived in this culture their entire lives.
The bit about "2nd tier city" and "if my kids have a southern accent..." were way over the line and shocking for even a New Yorker to say in print.
There are plenty of great places in Atlanta, and I'm proud to call it home. But I've taken in what it can offer and embraced it. Maybe some of you should too. If you want NY pizza...maybe you should make it yourself.
Some of the greatest minds and ideas have come from this city and this region and it doesn't deserve lambasting by outsiders.
I hate to say what i've heard my southern friends say...but...Delta's ready when you are! You obviously don't fit in here.
Posted by: Mary Datello | July 10, 2008 at 11:17 AM
Man, this is sad. ATL sucks and will continue to suck...well, not if all these NY'ers keep moving there. Oh well, let the masses flock to the brightest, cheapest light they can find.
Posted by: GCGUY | July 11, 2008 at 09:48 AM
I've lived in both New York and Atlanta, being a Long Islander from birth.
I love New York. It's a great place to visit. And I'd be happy to live there if I had unlimited money. But I don't live there. I live here.
People who complain about where they live ought to move. You don't like the pizza? Open your own place and do it right.
I live in East Cobb, and we have pizza that's good by NY standards (not great, but far better than the chain crap) - and excellent bagels and smoked fish. Why, just today, I had a breakfast of bagels, lox, nova, baked salmon, sable, and smoked whitefish that could pass muster amongst the Zabar's crowd. You just have to know where to go!
Posted by: Elisson | July 11, 2008 at 11:11 AM
I'm from NY (okay, State, not City) via England, and at this point I'd like to complain not about the pizza but the lack of a decent curry house on the corner and no fish and chips. Frankly I'm appalled that Georgia wasn't ready to cater to my ever need, and mine's a bitter shandy, ta.
Help. Send prawn crackers.
Posted by: HeatherErin | July 11, 2008 at 08:28 PM
Wow. What an absolutely ignorant article. Did the Bloomberg reporter go out of his way to find the most arrogant, obnoxious people that he could for his piece? As for the "second tier" comment, what city in the U.S. is NOT second tier to New York? Chicago is about the only one that I think would be close. And as for the accent? Well's just not go there since I cannot say anything nice in response.
As an Atlanta native, I know people from "up North" that are not anything like the people quoted in this article. But if Jessica and Jodi hate it so much, I will give them a little piece of advice that Lewis Grizzard offered many years ago. There is one thing we ask you to do if you have moved down to Atlanta from up north. We don't want you to tell us how you used to do it up in New York. We don't care. If you don't like it down here, Delta's ready when you are.
Posted by: FinanceBuzz | July 12, 2008 at 01:54 PM
I am bothered by the elitist tone of the article. I agree with Mary and Heather Erin 100%. My guess is that these individuals are just plain unhappy!
And I would put Galla's (Peachtree Industrial at Johnson Ferry Road) veggie pizza up against almost any NY pizza. I do, however, miss the NY diners!
Posted by: chailife atlanta | July 13, 2008 at 12:24 AM